


Sticks and Stones

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 3x10, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Maveth, Self Care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 23:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10524033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: While waiting for Jemma to get out of medical after their encounter with Hydra (3x10), May encourages Fitz to take a moment to reflect on his own pain & feelings and look after himself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Self care is severely lacking at Shield, so I decided to write some, and lbr it's pretty much blasphemous we haven't got more of these two. I love them.
> 
> TW: torture references/mentions. Set after 3x10.
> 
> Prompt: May helps Fitz deal with the fact that just because he wasn't hurt physically by Giyera/Ward, it doesn't mean he wasn't tortured and he isn't allowed to be not okay.

Fitz paced in the hallway, but rather than the stabilising effect that regular moment usually gave him, with every change of direction he felt himself winding tighter and tighter. He twisted his fingers, searching for some way of distracting himself, or of easing the tension before his lungs twisted into a knot too, and choked him.

“Fitz?” 

He stumbled at the interruption, and turned to see May standing in the doorway of the med bay, a soft frown on her face. 

“I’m fine,” Fitz insisted. “It’s Jemma, they won’t – they won’t let me see her. They won’t tell me if she’s okay. God. This is all my fault.” 

“No, it’s not,” May insisted calmly. She stepped toward him, but stopped when his instinct told him to pull away. 

“Of course it is,” he insisted, a whine of panic shaking his voice. “They ss- they stopped when I told them to, I should have told them earlier.” 

“It’s okay,” May assured him. “You’re both safe now. You made a good choice. You were standing up to them. There’s nothing wrong with that.” 

“Nothing wrong?” Fitz gestured incredulously at the doorway, through which was another doorway, through which was Simmons, getting who-knew-what medical attention. “She was _screaming._ Jemma. Was _screaming._ Blue bloody murder. It’s like – it’d be like – it’d be like you screaming. Or Bobbi. She doesn’t scream, okay? She just – she doesn’t. What they must have been doing, it must have been…” 

“Torture?” May supplied, as calm and solemn as ever. 

Fitz felt the tears prick his eyes again, and wiped them away under the guise of pinching his nose, as if trying to think. May – of course, as always – saw right through it, but didn’t take this moment to attack. Instead, she beckoned him through her doorway, into what was essentially the viewing room. It took a little coaxing, but he began to feel a knot unwind, and eventually followed her in. 

“I can’t look at her,” he rasped, keeping his eyes away from the viewing window. “I don’t want to see what they did, I – I don’t have a strong stomach.” 

“That’s okay. I just want you to know that she’s in there,” May pointed out. “She’s safe and she’s getting the help she needs, okay?” 

He nodded, feeling the tension begin to peel away. It wouldn’t truly leave him until Jemma was well again, he knew, but May’s even, steady presence was such a blessing he almost wanted to weep at the relief of it. Everyone had been shoving him out of the way, and he’d been so focused on forcing his way back to Jemma’s side that he’d forgotten to take a moment to breathe. 

Shuddering, he felt the air leave his chest and be sucked back in. He relished the feeling of it, and put his hands over his mouth to make it more tactile. Breathing. 

He sighed, a long and aching sigh, and it suddenly struck him how much he wanted to sit down. 

May pulled a chair over, and let him sink into it, and he leaned forward and buried his head in his hands, letting the day – the days? – crash over him. May waited a few seconds, and then gently put a hand on his shoulder. Fitz stiffened a little and looked up. 

“I need you to know that this is not your fault,” she insisted. “They designed all of that to get to you. That’s how psychological torture works. They _knew_ that hurting Jemma would hurt you. More than physically hurting you would. They intended it to be that way. You don’t have to feel bad about your own pain, or guilt – that was how they tortured _you.”_

Fitz shook his head. 

“They barely touched me.” 

“They tied you to a chair and made you listen to someone you love in hysterical terror. That’s not nothing.” May’s eyes were, for a second, unsteady on his, but she continued. “ _They_ were the ones who stopped you from helping her. You didn’t _let_ Jemma get hurt. They trapped you. Just like they trapped her. On purpose. To hurt you. Just because they didn’t actually cut your skin, it doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt you.” 

“But –“

He looked up, toward the observation window, but May called his attention back. 

“No. Fitz. Look at me,” she insisted. Which, of course, he did. 

“If it had been you, in that room, screaming,” she suggested, “would you expect that Jemma would come out of it unscathed? If she had been forced to listen to you being hurt?” 

He blinked, startled by the gaping hole in logic that May had discovered. 

“When Ward threw the two of you in the ocean and you came out with brain damage, did you expect Jemma to be okay? Not to be affected? Not to feel betrayed? Not to feel lost, without her best friend? Or helpless, because she didn’t know what to do?” 

“Well…no…” Thinking back on it, Fitz had been short-tempered and at times downright nasty to her, but he had never truthfully believed that she had come out of it all that much better than he had. Only in his darkest, most angry thoughts in the middle of the months when she had left, did he blame her for getting out and getting away, and he still felt bad about that. She must have been suffering. It was ridiculous to expect otherwise. 

And yet, here he was, demanding of himself that he ignore his own pain. Why? The fight was over, for now at least. And the pain was so, so real. 

A sob hitched his shoulders as he dwelled on what he had been clamping down for so long. He slapped his hands over his mouth, but not before more sobs came. He buried his face in his hands again, gasping for breath as he tried to stabilize himself. Blinking through tears, he tried to focus on May. 

“I can still hear it,” he confessed. “I can still ss-see Ward’s face. Before he went. I felt so – s-so _pathetic!”_

May squeezed his shoulder, glad that the angle between them was too awkward for a hug. For all her efforts at offering advice, she didn’t deal well with such raw emotions, and the taste of tears was one she would do well to avoid for as long as possible. Still, she knew well the dangers of trying to downplay such profound pain. If Fitz could let it out in her presence, she wasn’t about to stop him, even though it felt like a lance to her chest to think about the bright-eyed boy she’d recruited not so long ago, and the vicious crucible through which he’d been put to reach this point. 

 _You are not pathetic,_ she wanted to tell him, even as he shook and wept. _You are so strong._

Her tongue refused to form the words, as if it feared breaking the bubble of vulnerability that embraced them in this moment. It felt just as wrong to say it as to keep it to herself. Then, after a while, shaking ceased and the weeping subsided, and she had missed her chance. 

Fitz wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. 

“Sorry,” he joked. “I know you hate feelings.” 

May smiled a little, to let him know that no harm had been done. Deflection was a problem she was definitely not qualified to cure, but hopefully seeing and feeling Jemma alive and well would take care of the rest of whatever he was feeling, insofar as anything could after such an experience. Satisfied with their progress, May let herself slip back into the role he pushed her toward, and gave his shoulder one last squeeze before letting her hand drop and stepping away. 

“Get yourself cleaned up, Fitz,” she ordered, moving back toward the window with her arms crossed. “Jemma doesn’t need the both of you looking like a dog’s breakfast when she sees you next.”

Fitz smiled. It sounded, he thought, very much like something Jemma would say. Checking his cheeks one more time, to make sure nothing too embarrassing or exposing was left behind, Fitz stood out of his chair and, with a surprising amount of ease, headed down the hallway to the showers. 

He let the warmth run over his face and the raw skin on his wrists for a long time before he came out again.


End file.
